Over-accumulation stemming from the so-called golden age of global
capitalism has ensued an era of underconsumption as exemplified by low
profit rates and
chronic excess capacity. As such, what has taken place is an historical
transformation towards the process of financialization. With an
inability to absorb
effectively economic surpluses, concerning the promotion of rising
wages along with productivity, NFCs, or non-financial corporations, are
coerced to
paying a larger share of their internal funds, specifically via debt
leveraging (including consumers), to financial institutions. These
financial
institutions, which are increasingly concentrated in the hands of fewer
and fewer people, have become some of the most powerful actors.
Increasing
concentration of control within the financial sector lends credence to
Marx's (1894: 544-45) argument that what Foster & McChesney call the
age of
monopoly finance capital is one in which

[t]he credit system, which as its focus in the so-called national
banks and the big money lenders and usurers surrounding them,
constitutes enormous
centralization, and gives this class of parasites the fabulous power,
not only to periodically despoil industrial capitalists, but also to
interfere in
actual production in a most dangerous manner-and this gang knows
nothing about production and has nothing to do with it.